Being a college student is hard. Between classes, on-campus organization meetings, studying for finals and having a social life, it’s sometimes hard to find time for everything. One thing that often tends to fall to the bottom of the to-do list is eating (in a healthy way, at least), and when you do, you develop some weird eating habits.
More often than not, you’re scrambling to find time to eat in between the many things you have going on, and what you end up eating isn’t really that great for you. On-campus meal plans can tie you down to some questionable food and splurging for an outside meal means counting your pennies for a fast food run.
From the all-nighter munchies to the dining hall dilemmas, here are some of the strange food habits that many students are guilty of having only in college.
1. Eating only with people in your age group
This may not seem that weird at first, but it really makes all the difference. Never again, hopefully, will you be in an eatery filled completely with other people that are all of the same generation.
No happy families celebrating a birthday, groups of businessmen laughing at a lame joke their boss told or even a sickeningly happy couple sharing a dessert that is clearly not meant to be shared. It’s just a bunch of stressed, tired or slightly hungover co-eds attempting to make the mystery meat edible.
2. Gorging yourself the second you have access to food
The way the dining hall system is set up makes students think that once you’ve swiped in, you have to make the most of it. Like John Belushi’s scene in Animal House, students fill up their plates, camp out for hours on end to not have to re-swipe in, and smuggle things out in pockets and backpacks, all to make the most out of the overpriced meal plan.
That whole “everything in moderation” idea goes out the window in this case, as it does for most things in college. The #freshman15 is so real.
3. Forgetting to eat for hours on end
After the previously mentioned gorging, students also fall on the other end of the spectrum by forgetting or just not having time to eat. Between classes, clubs, internship applications, procrastination, sports and keeping up to date on social media, there really aren’t enough hours in the day and eating a balanced meal often falls by the wayside.
4. Not being able to cook for yourself
This is probably my personal favorite. Watching the people in my dorm burn everything from popcorn to mac and cheese to a dishtowel (sorry roomie), I wonder how they would survive without Postmates.
Being able to make food that doesn’t come out of a box, or even something that comes out of a box, is essential to joining the adult world. There are so many easy recipes that have gone so horribly wrong in college but hopefully, a little time in a real kitchen and hunger will be good teachers later on.
5. When you do go out, paying for meals with change
As a former waitress, I could always feel the shame in the air as some college student shelled out whatever small bills and coins they had found in between their cushions to pay for their meal. Now, on the other side of the #broke spectrum, I know that finding $5 on the ground means I can actually eat real food that day.
On another note, I discovered a fantastic Spoon article about places to eat when you’re broke AF and 10/10 would recommend you spend your pennies at these places.
6. Eating the same thing. Every. Week.
Whether eating in a dining hall every day or living off a small food budget, college kids end up eating from a limited pool of dishes. But after the tenth week of tacos and dry chicken, it all becomes a little hard to swallow.
Sometimes you just get too tired of chewing the same food for the thirty millionth time and just give up (have done this and then went back to get cereal, the college end-all, be-all).
7. Making sad and slightly disgusting mashups of food
When down to their last couple of snacks, college kids come up with some weird combinations. While some, like milkshakes and fries, are delicious balances of different flavors, others are an acquired taste. I don’t have much of a taste for peanut butter and pickles, but I doubt it is normal by any standards other than collegiate ones.
8. Eating at the strangest hours
We’ve all been guilty of making a trip to the nearest late-night place once in awhile, but some people have taken it to a whole new level. It doesn’t help that dining hall hours are atrocious. I mean, who eats dinner at 5 p.m.? Eating after you finally finish the essay you procrastinated until midnight the night before becomes a thing of the past when there are no more essays to put off in real life.
College creates some pretty strange food habits that don’t even seem that odd until you start adulting. The supposed best years of your life might also just be some of the strangest for your stomach.